Biometrics based human identification is one of the most critical and challenging task to meet growing demand for stringent security. Among different biometric features, fingerprint-based biometric is the most proven technique and has the largest market shares. Although fingerprint recognition has been studied for many years and much progress has been made, even the performance of state-of-the-art fingerprint matchers is still much lower than the expectations of people and theory estimation. The reason is that the traditional fingerprint acquisition is conducted by pressing or rolling of fingers against the hard surface (glass, silicon, polymer) or paper which often results in partial or degraded images due to improper finger placement, skin deformation, slippages, smearing or due to sensor noise. Therefore contactless finger imaging systems that can provide three dimensional (3D) representation of fingerprints have recently emerged to provide ideal solutions to above intrinsic problems. Such 3D approaches can provide more accurate personal identification due to the large amount of information contained in the 3D surface models as compared to the traditional two dimensional (2D) fingerprint images. The main obstacle of these emerging 3D fingerprint technologies to replace the conventional 2D fingerprint system lies in their bulk and high cost, which mainly results from the usage of structured lighting system or multiple cameras.
Besides, both of these technologies have not been able to exploit other surface parameters, like surface normal vectors, refraction parameters, and scattering parameters etc., which can also contribute to the precision of the reconstruction result. Therefore advanced capability to develop more and low-cost solution for the 3D fingerprint identification will significantly enhance the applicability of fingerprint recognition technologies in wide range of civilian and commercial applications.